*
The winter holidays started, and for the first time in my life I found the last school day a bit sad. At the beginning of the next term I would be back in Germany, so I had to say good-bye to everybody at the school.
During assembly Mrs Davies, the German teacher, outdid herself by getting the standard 8s to sing Wem Gott will rechte Gunst erweisen. After they had finished the 3 verses, Mrs Davies explained that the lyrics mean: if God really loves you He sends you out into the world. She also said that it was a privilege for Protea High to be participating in an exchange program that brought youths of different countries closer together.
Hopefully one day they’ll manage to bring youths of different cultures of their own country together.
I improvised a short speech telling everybody that this had been the best year I had ever had, and I thanked the school for letting me share their every day lives – and I really meant it.
Miss Pembleton stopped me in the corridor. “Well Mathilda, I’m glad you enjoyed your stay and I hope you’ve learned something during your time here. You know, we cannot take anything for granted and we are responsible for our own choices. Just remember that, and you’ll be a lot wiser than most people on this planet.” She threw an encouraging smile at me, turned round and sailed down the passage like a sturdy frigate out to conquer the world.
For a moment I pondered if there was more to Miss Pembleton than the pushy old bag I thought she was. Then Kim yelled that I should better hurry up and come to our classroom to receive my class’s special farewell gift.
Brian, the prefect handed me a parcel. “We know that you’re not into ladies’ fashion,” he grinned. “That’s why we thought you might appreciate this.”
I tore off the gift paper – a Protea High first rugby team jersey!
Are they taking the Mickey out of me, or what?
I still couldn’t give a hoot about rugby and I still didn’t know any of its rules. Everybody was standing there with a big smile, looking at me expectantly.
“Check the back,” Jenny said.
I turned the jersey over. They all had signed their name on it. I was truly touched.
During the first break I was called into Mr Martin’s office. The headmaster invited me to sit down in the leather chair opposite him.
“You know Mathilda, we had a couple of exchange students before you and they all stuck to the program – go to school every day, write exams; some of them even became prefects…but I wonder…I was a fighter pilot during the Second World War, in El Alamein…I got shot down. I returned to South Africa and became a teacher, then the headmaster of this school…life is a curious thing.” He smiled. “We haven’t seen you much around here lately, but I know the world is a vast place and there are things to learn everywhere.”
He got up and I got up. We exchanged the usual farewell wishes. And I wondered. Who is Mr Martin? I would never know but he was quite a guy – for a headmaster.
The last thing I did at Protea High was to find Lettie, the swearing tea lady. I spotted her pushing the tea trolley towards the school kitchen.
“Lettie…Lettie!”
The coloured lady stopped in her tracks and turned round.”Jirra, you gave me a fokken skrik.”
“Sorry Lettie, I didn’t mean to.”
She eyed me from my toes to the top of my head. “They say you’re going back home to a place which is like a deep freeze half of the year.”
“Ja, and the other half of the year it’s lekker lush and green and the cows are grazing amongst the dandelions and the lovely sound of bells is ringing through the air…and I wanted to give you this.” I handed her the last of the 10 Bavarian cow bells I had brought as gifts. They had been quite popular with everybody and if one could believe Sarie, there was now a heiffer called Mathilda with a bell from Riedberg round her neck, right there on the Mooifontein farm in the Freestate.
Lettie examined the bell from all sides and also seemed to like it. “Very nice gift, baie baie dankie. The blerry nicest gift I had in a long time.” She hung the bell on a hook on her tea trolley and ambled off towards the kitchen. The trolley rumbled over the old floorboards, Lettie mumbled something, but it was drowned by the full bodied sound of the bell. Looked like I had found the solution to ‘Lettie’s problem’. If Protea High didn’t want to listen to the tea lady’s flow of swear words anymore, they wouldn’t have to.
The university also broke up. The kids of iSkolo were back with their parents. A couple of Denzil’s volunteer friends were giving special classes 3 times a week. I nearly keeled out of my bio sandals when I heard where iSkolo had moved to.
“We are in V.B.’s only art-déco building now,” Denzil told me proudly. “You should see those chrome light fittings all over the show, and there is a pink marble fountain in the middle of the dining room, and we’ve got 5 toilets and a huge kitchen.”
“The Art-déco house is saved from the Philistines,” Julie grinned happily when I asked her. “The richest man in the province put in a phenomenal offer and the town council accepted it. It’s a pity that the place is staying empty at the moment. The new owner is away travelling and until he comes back nothing will be done to the house. It needs some fixing up – the sooner the better. Well, at least the rich guy’s nephew is keeping an eye on the place. He seems to be quite a weirdo, some kind of long haired marine archeologist, and he’s building a boat in one of the old sheds at the airport.”
The Winters stayed at home for the holidays. Ludwig had to run the book shop and they were still patrolling the schools at night, although nothing had happened after the riots.
“V.B. is a holiday town,” Julie said when Greta complained that she was about the only girl in her class who wouldn’t go anywhere, not even to the Kruger Park or the hot springs in Aliwal.
“Don’t be so ungrateful,” Julie said exasperated. “Lots of people from Jo’burg would only be too happy to spend a holiday here.”
“Not me,” Greta whined. “We haven’t even got horses.”
“We can go horse riding at Kim’s,” I suggested. “The Jamesons are still here for a week before they go to Umhlanga Rocks.
“I don’t want to ride on Kim’s stupid horses,” Greta wailed. “And you see, they are also going away. It’s not fair…”
“So you think life is treating you badly, my girl?” Ludwig asked.
“Yehes,” Greta sniffed.
“All right,” Ludwig got up. “Get all your pocket money. I want to show you something.”
“Where are they going?” I asked Julie when Ludwig drove out of the gate.
“I haven’t got a clue.”
5 minutes later the phone rang. “Guess what,” Kim said on the other end of the line.
“What?”
“We are not going to Umhlanga Rocks after all.”
“But you have been talking about nothing else in the last few weeks. What happened?”
“You won’t believe it. My gran slipped on the stoep and broke both her legs.”
“Hell!”
“Ja. Now my grandpa doesn’t want to leave her, of course, and my mom doesn’t want to leave the 2 of them and my pa says he would never go without my mom, so we are all staying.”
“I’m sorry for your gran but you know what?”
“What?”
“It will be good to have you around. It’ll sort of enrich the last days of my stay.”
Kim laughed. “To tell you the truth, I’m not that devastated that we are not going.”
“Really?”
“Ja,” Kim sighed dreamily. “You see, I met that boy…”
From wherever her father had taken her, Greta came back a changed person.
“How did you do it?” Julie asked Ludwig amazed, after Greta had offered to set the table, to clean the rat cage and said it would be lovely to go horse riding at Kim’s.
“I took her to the Place of Safety and asked the matron to show her around.”
Julie’s chin dropped. “It’s
horrible there from what I hear.”
“Ja, it looks like a prison and those kids have got nothing. They wear donated clothes, they eat slap pap every day and they never go on holiday. I told Greta to buy chocolates with her pocket money for them.”
“It must have been a hard lesson for her,” Julie said. “But it seems to have left an impression.”
“Sometimes we need things in our lives to be put into perspective,” Ludwig said.
The holidays were one formidable jol of being with Denzil, cooking up a storm at somebody’s place, going horse riding at Kim’s, sleeping over somewhere and watching films Ludwig took out at the film hire joint. Sometimes I nearly forgot that I had to leave. Sometimes the dread sat in my guts that I could hardly breathe.
And then the last day came. I walked around like a robot, watching myself trying to keep up a normal appearance, feeling totally empty inside. Denzil, the Winters and Kim took me to the airport.
Hugs and kisses.
Denzil’s deep green eyes. His arms around me. His lanky body against mine.
He pulled a jasmine twig out of his bag, tucked it behind my ear and smiled: “We’ll meet again.”
About Gunda Hardegen-Brunner
Gunda Hardegen-Brunner grew up in the Black Forest and in Bavaria. She was first published at the age of 11 – a poem for the schoolmag – which was promptly closed down because of it.
Always interested in foreign countries and other cultures she spent a year (1975/76) as an exchange student in South Africa.
She studied ethnology at the universities of Heidelberg, München and Paris VII, later became a physiotherapist and lived for several years in France. After a serious car smash she returned to South Africa to recuperate and subsequently married her former host father, the actor Michael Brunner, to many known as Skip in Isidingo, Seedling in Jock of the Bushveld, Dr Budlander in Soul City and from dozens of other movies and TV series.
Gunda and Michael lived for 10 years on their smallholding off the grid with stacks of free range animals all over the show. They built a house using mainly local materials like the ground to make bricks, trees for roofbeams and veld grass to thatch the roof. They also built a traditional, wooden, 40 foot gaff-rigged cutter and lived on it for 3 years. When Michael’s health began to deteriorate they moved to a farm with a retreat centre in the Overberg and camped in an ancient milkwood forest for one and a half years. In search for a new place they travelled southern Africa for a while and swallowed the anchor in the Karoo.
Michael died in 2012 and since then Gunda has been on an inner and outer journey, which her book The Stars Beneath My Feet is all about.
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